Labor’s madness

What on earth could have prompted last night’s outbreak of extraordinary, suicidal madness in the parliamentary Labor Party? On the cusp of a compromise that would isolate the biggest miners in their opposition to the troublesome resources tax, with poll numbers apparently having ­stabilised and Telstra finally inside the national broadband network tent, the Rudd government has been pitched into a leadership crisis from which it could struggle to recover. This not just a crisis for the Labor government and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. It is also a crisis for Australia, which has enjoyed 35 years of stable, long-term governments which have made it the envy of the world, but now faces the prospect of the dissolution of an elected government at the hands of the faceless men and women of the union and factional power brokers.

That the mutineers included Bill Shorten, the former national secretary of one of Australia’s biggest unions, the Australian Workers’ Union, and had that union’s explicit backing, will have opposition strategists and advertising consultants salivating at the prospect of their next few weeks’ work. More important than that, the episode will have business -- especially foreign investors already unnerved by the resources tax debacle -- wondering about the stability of the country for the first time in a generation. These are truly remarkable, and unnecessary, events.

To be sure, Mr Rudd’s leadership of the Labor government was weakened by sliding poll numbers, the mishandling of the resources tax proposal and the emissions trading and refugees backflips, and by his personal awkwardness and lack of support within the party. But governments -- especially first-term ­governments -- have recovered from worse poll positions, and Mr Rudd maintained a comfortable lead over opposition leader Tony Abbott as preferred Prime Minister. Further, as Mr Rudd pointed out at his press conference last night, while the past few months have been horrible for the government, it has a decent story to tell the electorate when it goes to the polls in a few months’ time. Its stewardship of the economy during the financial crisis was decisive, if marred by poor execution and waste, it has won a health and hospitals reform deal with the states, and it is making progress on its national broadband network policy and possibly putting the resources tax to bed as an election issue.

This should count for something in this morning’s caucus ­deliberations. Mr Rudd has flaws as a prime minister, and Julia Gillard has been an able deputy with superior communication skills and temperament, but now -- a few months from an election -- is not the time for the Labor government to change leaders.